Latest / Stuff You Should Know / How Morgellons Disease Works

Transcript

How Morgellons Disease Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from how stuff
0:04
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
0:13
Speaker 1: Clark and Charles W. Chuck, Bryan Jerry are with me.
0:15
Speaker 1: So of course as this should know. I know that
0:20
Speaker 1: is false, sir, because this is probably the most interesting,
0:25
Speaker 1: weirdest podcast we've done in a long long time. I
0:29
Speaker 1: thought it was. I was I had never heard of this.
0:32
Speaker 1: You sent it my way. I was like, all right,
0:33
Speaker 1: some some disease, Like, let's cover some disease. And then
0:37
Speaker 1: I started started reading it and I was just like,
0:40
Speaker 1: what the world mind going on? And I still don't
0:44
Speaker 1: know what's going on. It's totally fascinating. Well you are
0:48
Speaker 1: in the majority, Chuck about not knowing about it. Yeah, yeah,
0:52
Speaker 1: it's a mysterious disease of some sort and there's a
0:56
Speaker 1: great battle going on. But is it even a disease?
1:00
Speaker 1: Very controversial, that's the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah, And we're
1:04
Speaker 1: um and we're talking about it based on an article
1:06
Speaker 1: from how stuff Works. Um, what we're talking about is
1:10
Speaker 1: I say more gelons, Chuck and Martin Basher say more gelons.
1:16
Speaker 1: I saw on some pronunciation site more jellons. But we're
1:20
Speaker 1: both gonna make a hard g sound. How about that.
1:23
Speaker 1: We can agree on the hard g okay um. But
1:26
Speaker 1: what we're talking about is this disease that was basically discovered,
1:32
Speaker 1: first described in two thousand two. Initially that will make
1:38
Speaker 1: your radar go up, because that is super new. But
1:41
Speaker 1: the name itself is borrowed from a seventeenth century obscure
1:46
Speaker 1: French medical text Morgelons more gelons, however you want to pronounce.
1:52
Speaker 1: It was first used to describe some weird condition where
1:56
Speaker 1: coarse hair grew out of the backs of children. If
2:01
Speaker 1: you go on to any Morglon's research site and research
2:04
Speaker 1: the origin of the name, you will also usually see
2:08
Speaker 1: right afterwards a sentence that says, that's not what this is.
2:12
Speaker 1: It's just this lady used the same name the first
2:14
Speaker 1: person to describe it. That's a good way to say that,
2:19
Speaker 1: because her son had it. Yeah, the the lady in
2:22
Speaker 1: questions name was Mary Liteo. That's how I'm pronouncing her name.
2:27
Speaker 1: No hard g um. But she had a two year
2:30
Speaker 1: old who at the time was saying uh, bugs and
2:34
Speaker 1: pointing to his lip and um, he had some sort
2:37
Speaker 1: of sores around his lips, and when she looked closely,
2:41
Speaker 1: she saw that there was some strange threads or string
2:46
Speaker 1: or some fibers coming out of these sores and his lips,
2:50
Speaker 1: and she became alarmed. She did and uh, she, like
2:57
Speaker 1: almost every sufferer from this odd is it a disease
3:01
Speaker 1: or not, since then, has had a really hard time
3:05
Speaker 1: getting diagnosis, getting doctors to take her seriously. Um, so
3:09
Speaker 1: much so that she formed a support group h and
3:12
Speaker 1: a website, the More Gellons Research Foundation, And uh, I
3:19
Speaker 1: guess we just need to get into it. I mean,
3:20
Speaker 1: it is one of the oddest things I've ever heard.
3:22
Speaker 1: It's dermacological, it's about the skin. Um. There are sores,
3:28
Speaker 1: there's a lot of itching, and that The most mysterious
3:31
Speaker 1: thing about it, though, is like you said, these blue, red, black,
3:37
Speaker 1: and I think white fibers And you can look up
3:41
Speaker 1: more gallons if you type in more gallons fibers and
3:44
Speaker 1: immin search that you're gonna see these things. And they
3:47
Speaker 1: just look like little threads coming out of your skin
3:51
Speaker 1: or burrowed beneath your skin. So the thing is chuck,
3:55
Speaker 1: is you know, fibers associated with sores on somebody's body. Weird,
4:01
Speaker 1: but not the most mysterious thing in the universe. The
4:04
Speaker 1: problem is is there's a guy, a professor of pharmacology
4:09
Speaker 1: at Oklahoma State University named Randy Wymore who took an
4:15
Speaker 1: interest in morgalance Diseasey doesn't have it himself, but he
4:19
Speaker 1: read about it and thought, well, all we all you
4:22
Speaker 1: have to do is you know, look at these fibers. Yeah,
4:25
Speaker 1: it's probably an ingrown hair or something. And with the
4:28
Speaker 1: research carried out independently by UM Dr why Moore, the
4:34
Speaker 1: weirdness the legend began to grow because it was first
4:39
Speaker 1: identified in two tho two, when I think in two
4:40
Speaker 1: thousand five he heard about it and started researching. So
4:44
Speaker 1: he got in touch with um morgalon sufferers and said, hey,
4:47
Speaker 1: send me some of these weird fibers and I want
4:50
Speaker 1: to check him out. And apparently when he asked for
4:54
Speaker 1: some assistance and identifying what the fibers were, he found
4:57
Speaker 1: that not all of them could be conclusively identified. Yeah,
5:02
Speaker 1: like not as Oh well I can't tell is it
5:06
Speaker 1: some weird animal hair or is it a cotton fiber?
5:10
Speaker 1: Is it nylon? They weren't able to identify them at all.
5:14
Speaker 1: As a it did not exist in the FBI database.
5:17
Speaker 1: It was not plant or animal um or or and
5:23
Speaker 1: it didn't match any of the eighty thousand plus synthetic
5:27
Speaker 1: fibers that are in in the FBI database. Yeah, so
5:32
Speaker 1: it literally was um. I mean, he he brought one
5:35
Speaker 1: even to a specialist who I think from a police
5:39
Speaker 1: department that does this for a living, looked at under
5:42
Speaker 1: microscope and he was like, I've never seen anything like
5:44
Speaker 1: this in my life. So the the the mystery took
5:49
Speaker 1: root at that point. Oh yeah, in a big way. Um.
5:52
Speaker 1: And the problem is, though, is the more morgelons are
5:57
Speaker 1: more Gelon sufferers. We have no idea how many there are,
6:02
Speaker 1: because the medical establishment has concluded that there's no such thing. Yeah.
6:09
Speaker 1: I mean this article is written in what like two
6:13
Speaker 1: thousand ten, it said fourteen thousand confirmed. But um, if
6:17
Speaker 1: you're not being diagnosed, or if you're told you might
6:20
Speaker 1: be crazy, which we'll get to in a minute, Um,
6:24
Speaker 1: then yeah, who knows how many people? And man, it's
6:26
Speaker 1: just it gets more and more interesting, it does, so. Um.
6:30
Speaker 1: In addition to fibers, there's all sorts of horrible symptoms
6:35
Speaker 1: that Morgelon sufferers report. So first of all, you feel
6:40
Speaker 1: like you are infested with bugs. Yeah, that's the big,
6:44
Speaker 1: the creepiest one. As you literally they all talk about
6:47
Speaker 1: burrowing sensation and they all say bugs, like something is
6:51
Speaker 1: under my skin and it's moving exactly. A lot of
6:54
Speaker 1: them report feeling like a certain kind of grittiness under
6:57
Speaker 1: their skin and um, often on the underside of their eyelids.
7:02
Speaker 1: And a lot of people who have Morgellons say that's
7:05
Speaker 1: those are eggs. They have um all sorts of sores
7:09
Speaker 1: that itch like crazy, that um from which fibers are
7:15
Speaker 1: pitted or come up from or whatever. Yeah. Um, those
7:20
Speaker 1: fibers can be anywhere on the skin. And the weird
7:23
Speaker 1: thing is they can pop up in places that people
7:26
Speaker 1: can't reach with their arms. Right, and you're gonna start
7:28
Speaker 1: itching during this podcast? We apologize. Were you itching when
7:32
Speaker 1: you were reading this stuff? No, I was surprised. I wasn't, man,
7:35
Speaker 1: I was itching like crazy. It occurred to me. Have
7:38
Speaker 1: we ever done one on itching? I feel like we have,
7:41
Speaker 1: because when I read some of that stuff will get
7:43
Speaker 1: too later from that that one researcher, it felt really familiar.
7:47
Speaker 1: It did to me too, But I looked it up
7:48
Speaker 1: and there's nothing. There's no podcast in our archive on it.
7:53
Speaker 1: I know we've done something because I remember specifically talking
7:56
Speaker 1: about its being a dull they all pain right spoilers, Okay,
8:05
Speaker 1: that comes later. So Um, like I said, those fibers
8:08
Speaker 1: can appear anywhere on the body, and um sometimes they
8:12
Speaker 1: move too. So if you're a Morgalon suffer, you're you're
8:15
Speaker 1: pretty much convinced that you are infested with some sort
8:19
Speaker 1: of weird bug, some kind of parasite. Maybe that's that's
8:22
Speaker 1: inhabiting your skin with laying eggs, and um, you have
8:27
Speaker 1: a basically a compulsion and obsession, is how it's described
8:31
Speaker 1: by a lot of Morgalon sufferers to get these things
8:34
Speaker 1: out of your skin wherever they are. There's one person
8:38
Speaker 1: there's this awesome article called The Itch Nobody Can Scratch
8:41
Speaker 1: by will Store, highly recommended. Yeah, it's it's a long
8:45
Speaker 1: form article and it's worth every minute you spend on it.
8:49
Speaker 1: Um And uh it was it's on medium dot com,
8:52
Speaker 1: I think is where we found it. And uh, there's
8:56
Speaker 1: one one Morgalon suffer who's interviewed in there who's talking
8:59
Speaker 1: about um, noticing a fiber, feeling it on their eyeball
9:04
Speaker 1: and then looking in the mirror the magnifying glass because
9:07
Speaker 1: he's are thought to be very tiny bugs and um
9:12
Speaker 1: seeing this little fiber moving across the prison's eyeball, So
9:15
Speaker 1: they took a pair of tweezers to their eyeball to
9:18
Speaker 1: get this thing out. This is the kind of suffering
9:22
Speaker 1: that these people are going through. Yeah, this other lady
9:25
Speaker 1: uh soaked her body in baths of bleach. Um. People
9:32
Speaker 1: like we'll get turned away from doctors, are told they're crazy,
9:34
Speaker 1: to the point where they contemplate or commit suicide because
9:39
Speaker 1: it's so maddening and the itching is so maddening, and
9:42
Speaker 1: to not be taken seriously, it's so maddening to be
9:44
Speaker 1: told it's a psychiatric condition. Uh. But in two thousand eight, UM,
9:51
Speaker 1: after thousands and thousands of people wrote into Congress, people
9:54
Speaker 1: like John McCain and Hillary Clinton and at the time Obama,
9:58
Speaker 1: they urged the CDC to do a study d and
10:01
Speaker 1: uh we will tell you the results of that study
10:03
Speaker 1: right after this message break. Okay, So there is a
10:08
Speaker 1: disease or is it a disease very mysterious in origin.
10:12
Speaker 1: No one takes the sufferers seriously or not. No one
10:14
Speaker 1: but the medical community at large doesn't take them seriously.
10:18
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about why. But one reason why is
10:21
Speaker 1: because of the findings of the c d C, which
10:24
Speaker 1: said that there was no singer, a single underlying medical
10:28
Speaker 1: condition or infectious source that was identified. Most sores appeared
10:32
Speaker 1: to be the result of chronic scratching and picking without
10:35
Speaker 1: a cause. Materials and fibers obtained from skin biopsy specimens
10:39
Speaker 1: were mostly cellulose compatible with cotton fibers um. A substantial
10:44
Speaker 1: number of the participants in the study scored highly in
10:47
Speaker 1: screening tests for one or more coexisting psychiatric or addictive conditions,
10:52
Speaker 1: including depression, somatic concerns, which is an indicator preoccupation with
10:57
Speaker 1: health issues, and drug use. Apparently, of the participants in
11:02
Speaker 1: the study tested positive for drugs, they demonstrated no infectious cause,
11:07
Speaker 1: no evidence of environmental link, no indication that would be
11:10
Speaker 1: helpful to perform additional testing as potential causes, and future
11:14
Speaker 1: efforts should focus on helping patients reduce their symptoms. So
11:19
Speaker 1: there you have it. The CDC loudly said, these are
11:23
Speaker 1: people that are just scratching themselves too much and becoming
11:26
Speaker 1: obsessed with that. Yes, and with that CDC study, the
11:31
Speaker 1: door kind of closed, at least for the time being,
11:33
Speaker 1: on any help from the medical establishment. Yeah, so let's recap.
11:37
Speaker 1: If you have more glance disease, you have welts all
11:42
Speaker 1: over your body, from which there seemed to be fibers
11:46
Speaker 1: of possibly an unknown origin sprouting. Um. You constantly itch,
11:52
Speaker 1: so you're constantly scratching. So those those welts are getting
11:55
Speaker 1: worse and worse and worse. Um, you feel like stinging sensations.
12:01
Speaker 1: A lot of people compare them to being stuck with
12:06
Speaker 1: compass needles all over your body. Um, And when you
12:12
Speaker 1: go to your doctor, they tell you that you're wrong,
12:18
Speaker 1: that stop scratching yourself. This is all in your head.
12:21
Speaker 1: One of the very few academic papers that wasn't written
12:25
Speaker 1: by a member of a Morglon's research organization said this
12:31
Speaker 1: is most likely all in their head. And what you
12:34
Speaker 1: should do if you're a physician and somebody comes to
12:37
Speaker 1: you with what they think is Morgalon's disease, is that
12:40
Speaker 1: you should give them a anti parasitic ointment just to
12:45
Speaker 1: basically get them to trust you, and then prescribe antipsychotics.
12:51
Speaker 1: Because what the medical establishment, and especially now that the
12:55
Speaker 1: CDC study came in, believe is that this is something
12:58
Speaker 1: called delusional paracitosis. Yeah, the belief that you have bugs
13:02
Speaker 1: living in your skin, that everyone who has morgal one
13:05
Speaker 1: disease is crazy. That's what the medical establishment thinks. Yeah,
13:12
Speaker 1: but they don't say things like crazy. No, they don't know,
13:14
Speaker 1: but they're they're saying like, you are delusional, you have
13:17
Speaker 1: a false belief that you have bugs on your skin.
13:21
Speaker 1: But the thing is, if you look at morgal and suffers,
13:24
Speaker 1: there's people from all different walks of life. Yeah, this
13:28
Speaker 1: is the I mean, the initial kid was a two
13:29
Speaker 1: year old Oakland A's baseball picture, Billy Cooke. He left
13:36
Speaker 1: the game because, well for a lot of reasons, but
13:38
Speaker 1: this was one of them, because he suffered Joni Mitchell, Yeah,
13:42
Speaker 1: you ever heard of her, famous singer, She suffers from
13:46
Speaker 1: it um. In this will store article, there's a guy
13:49
Speaker 1: named Paul who's a successful, seeming middle manager type from Texas,
13:55
Speaker 1: and all these people, there's a doctor, a general practitioner
13:58
Speaker 1: who has it. Should talk about him. All of these
14:01
Speaker 1: people are are reporting similar symptoms. So the idea is,
14:07
Speaker 1: if it's all delusional parasitosis, how is it possible that
14:11
Speaker 1: all these people think they have the same thing. Well,
14:15
Speaker 1: one answer that they think might be the case is
14:18
Speaker 1: the internet because people start itching and they think what
14:22
Speaker 1: in the world is going on with the sore? And
14:23
Speaker 1: they look on the internet and they find more Gallant's disease,
14:26
Speaker 1: and then they self diagnose. All this came about in
14:30
Speaker 1: two thousand two. Is that a coincidence? I don't know,
14:33
Speaker 1: but I know that self diagnosis is a problem. Um.
14:37
Speaker 1: And I still don't know what to think about this.
14:38
Speaker 1: When you read these stories, you feel awful for these people. Um.
14:43
Speaker 1: That's the science can usually crack the code at some
14:45
Speaker 1: point though everyone is saying there these people. No one
14:49
Speaker 1: is saying that they're not suffering. Like, these people are
14:52
Speaker 1: very much suffering. But the medical establishment is saying, it's
14:57
Speaker 1: all in your head. We have a name for it.
14:58
Speaker 1: It's called delusional parasitosis. Um. The people who have mor
15:04
Speaker 1: Galiss disease are saying, like, no, this isn't in my head.
15:07
Speaker 1: I've got fibers, like some of them have trapped bugs supposedly,
15:12
Speaker 1: like they're they're saying, you guys aren't listening to me.
15:16
Speaker 1: You can give me anti psychotics all you want, but
15:18
Speaker 1: it's not gonna cure it. Yeah, And it's it's that
15:21
Speaker 1: also that you fall into the trap. I read The
15:23
Speaker 1: psychopath Test by John Ronson um fantastic book, by the way,
15:28
Speaker 1: but there's a guy in there that tried to get
15:31
Speaker 1: out of a jail sentence for an assault by pretending
15:33
Speaker 1: he was crazy, got sent up to the worst middle
15:36
Speaker 1: institution in England, and it was like, I'll be able
15:40
Speaker 1: to get out of here in no time. The more
15:41
Speaker 1: saying he appeared to try to be, the more crazy
15:44
Speaker 1: they thought he was. And that's the same thing that
15:48
Speaker 1: goes on with a lot of morgell And sufferers is
15:51
Speaker 1: the more rationally we tried to talk about this, the
15:53
Speaker 1: more they were like, Okay, let's just take it easy
15:57
Speaker 1: and we'll get to the bottom of this. And it's uh.
16:00
Speaker 1: And they point out, I think the uh author of
16:03
Speaker 1: the thing you recommended was called the chicken and egg thing,
16:06
Speaker 1: like it makes them spin out of control and depressed
16:09
Speaker 1: in suicidal and and nuts. So but is that you
16:14
Speaker 1: know which came first? Exactly? So are you suffering from
16:18
Speaker 1: um these psychotic symptoms right or um mentally imbalanced symptoms
16:26
Speaker 1: because as yeah, and from not being listened to or
16:30
Speaker 1: are you you know, are you suffering this these these
16:34
Speaker 1: physical symptoms because you're out of it a little bit. Yeah,
16:38
Speaker 1: and it is a chicken or the egg kind of question.
16:41
Speaker 1: But um, the idea of the fibers, that one is
16:46
Speaker 1: a big one that a lot of people with morbilon
16:48
Speaker 1: suffers point to. They're like, well, wait a minute. People
16:50
Speaker 1: have found that these fibers can't be explained by anybody.
16:55
Speaker 1: So is that the case? Well, Uh, your buddy Randy Wymore, Um,
17:00
Speaker 1: he's really taking the mantle here, like I really like
17:02
Speaker 1: this guy has done this. Uh. He the first time,
17:06
Speaker 1: like we said, he went to the police department and
17:08
Speaker 1: they found no known match in the database and couldn't
17:11
Speaker 1: figure out what it was. Later on he asked for
17:15
Speaker 1: um uh samples from sufferers and had them send them
17:19
Speaker 1: to him. He took those in and uh, it was
17:24
Speaker 1: pretty disappointed by the results when he sent them to
17:26
Speaker 1: a lab to identify because they found that they were
17:30
Speaker 1: somewhere cotton, somewhere nylon. Um. He said, it was pretty disappointing.
17:36
Speaker 1: One was a fungal residue, When was a human hair,
17:38
Speaker 1: When was a rodent hair, One was a goose down. Uh.
17:43
Speaker 1: And so the author, you know, the author of this
17:45
Speaker 1: paper was saying, were you disappointing. He said, well, yeah,
17:47
Speaker 1: sure I was. But there were um some there was
17:50
Speaker 1: one that was unknown and he said, so it was unknown.
17:53
Speaker 1: He said, well, they said it was a big fungal fiber,
17:55
Speaker 1: but they weren't completely sure, so he was kind of
17:59
Speaker 1: debunked a little bit. So it's weird. It's like, sometimes
18:03
Speaker 1: these fibers are real things, and sometimes it seem like
18:05
Speaker 1: they're not right. So and with the fibers, it's um
18:08
Speaker 1: there's a definite belief among the medical establishment that these
18:14
Speaker 1: are just ordinary, everyday fibers. And if you start paying
18:18
Speaker 1: attention to any spot on your body right, you're probably
18:22
Speaker 1: going to be able to find a fiber. And if
18:24
Speaker 1: that suddenly has some sort of significance to you and
18:28
Speaker 1: you fixate on that, then you can easily fall down
18:31
Speaker 1: this mental rabbit hole that Morgalon suffers. Supposedly are are
18:35
Speaker 1: under the influence of Yeah, and and here's a tip,
18:38
Speaker 1: and this is something I didn't know about. If you
18:40
Speaker 1: have anything on your body that you pick off your
18:44
Speaker 1: body or any just strange skin thing, and you put
18:46
Speaker 1: it in a zip block back, take it to your doctor,
18:50
Speaker 1: that's a sign to them. And I've never heard this,
18:52
Speaker 1: but it's called the matchbox sign, and it's been they've
18:55
Speaker 1: been calling it this since the nineteen thirties. And apparently
18:58
Speaker 1: doctors when they see you bring anything and say, hey,
19:00
Speaker 1: what's this weird thing? They go, okay, here's another another
19:03
Speaker 1: crazy person, right, so you you it's a huge catch
19:07
Speaker 1: twenty two because Morgalon suffers. One of the symptoms of
19:10
Speaker 1: this disease are things that come off your body, whether
19:14
Speaker 1: it's some sort of colored fiber or um little black
19:18
Speaker 1: specs that's that fall off on mass from the body.
19:22
Speaker 1: I forgot about those. They come off your body. And
19:24
Speaker 1: if you're a Morgalon stuffer, well you think, like, I
19:26
Speaker 1: need to show this to my doctor. Is evidence, But
19:29
Speaker 1: in doing so, as far as the medical establishment is concerned,
19:33
Speaker 1: you are immediately prima facie proving yourself to be mentally imbalanced,
19:39
Speaker 1: and that's your problem. All you're doing by bringing this
19:43
Speaker 1: evidence is supporting this diagnosis of delusional parasitology or parasitism. Yeah,
19:50
Speaker 1: and that's there there go to. Yeah, if you bring
19:52
Speaker 1: it in in a little matchbox or's a bluck bag,
19:54
Speaker 1: they're thinking, all right, here we go. This person thinks
19:56
Speaker 1: they have bugs under their skin. Exactly. So I'm gonna
19:59
Speaker 1: give a little anti parasitic lotion that may or may
20:03
Speaker 1: not really do anything in real life, could be a placebo.
20:07
Speaker 1: And then after they trust me, I'm gonna recommend they
20:10
Speaker 1: try some antipsychotics. So there are a couple of more
20:13
Speaker 1: people we should talk about here, Um, a couple of
20:16
Speaker 1: doctors actually that have some more interesting findings that will
20:19
Speaker 1: get too right after this break, Josh, Yeah, let's chat
20:27
Speaker 1: about square space, my friend. Okay, Because if you need
20:30
Speaker 1: a website and you don't have one, there's really no
20:33
Speaker 1: easier way to do so, no, I mean, the whole
20:35
Speaker 1: thing is Dragon Drop is very intuitive. There's no need
20:38
Speaker 1: to learn how to use code. And in case you
20:41
Speaker 1: find yourself in a bit of a pickle, maybe even
20:43
Speaker 1: a bind, they have seven customer support so you can
20:47
Speaker 1: live chat with them twenty four hours a day, seven
20:49
Speaker 1: days a week. Yeah, all that stuff is great. But
20:52
Speaker 1: what I love about it is it's beautiful. The designs
20:55
Speaker 1: are great. It's gonna look clean, it's gonna look professional.
20:58
Speaker 1: Everyone's gonna be tricked into thinking you're like a master
21:01
Speaker 1: code or web designer. Yeah, and if you want to
21:03
Speaker 1: sell stuff and make some money's all plans have commerce options,
21:07
Speaker 1: from hosting an entire store to accepting donations for your
21:10
Speaker 1: personal blog. Plus Chuck, you can get the whole thing
21:15
Speaker 1: risk free. Now, wow, that sounds pretty great. Risk free
21:18
Speaker 1: on your laptop, on your mobile device. It's gonna look
21:21
Speaker 1: great on your tablet. That sounds like an all in
21:23
Speaker 1: one solution to me. That's right. Like I said, risk free.
21:26
Speaker 1: You can try squarespace if you go to squarespace dot
21:30
Speaker 1: com slash stuff for your fourteen day trial with no
21:33
Speaker 1: credit card necessary. If you like the product, it costs
21:36
Speaker 1: as low as eight dollars a month and includes a
21:38
Speaker 1: free domain name if you sign up for a year.
21:41
Speaker 1: That's right, So just use our offera code stuff to
21:43
Speaker 1: get that ten percent off your first purchase. All right,
21:51
Speaker 1: let's talk about Dr and Louise Oaklander because the author
21:55
Speaker 1: I keep calling the author who was at the road
21:57
Speaker 1: and again Will Store, Yeah, Will Store got into with
22:00
Speaker 1: this um professor at Harvard Medical School and she is
22:04
Speaker 1: an itch specialist, a neurologist, and he thought, you know,
22:08
Speaker 1: she would quickly dismiss him, but she was actually had
22:11
Speaker 1: heard of it and was into it. And um, what
22:15
Speaker 1: she thinks is that it's a chronic itch disorder that
22:18
Speaker 1: isn't being taken seriously. Yeah, she feels like the medical
22:21
Speaker 1: establishment is mistreating Morgalon sufferers by just completely discounting them
22:26
Speaker 1: is all crazy, rather than doing any real investigation. Yeah,
22:30
Speaker 1: I'm sure he was stoked to meet her at least,
22:32
Speaker 1: and that's the case. Also, I should say the general
22:35
Speaker 1: view of the CDC investigation that it was just basically
22:38
Speaker 1: them going through the motions, or at at worst they
22:42
Speaker 1: were looking for evidence to back up their own ideas
22:45
Speaker 1: that it was delusional parasiteis m Yeah, sufferers I think
22:49
Speaker 1: said the study was jump going in, so what is it?
22:52
Speaker 1: Garbage going in, garbage comes out, So they didn't take
22:56
Speaker 1: much stock in it. Um. But what we were talking
22:59
Speaker 1: about earlier in nine eighty seven, a team of researchers
23:01
Speaker 1: in Germany found the itch wasn't what we all thought
23:03
Speaker 1: it was, which was a weak form of pain um
23:06
Speaker 1: And they said that an itch has its own, separate,
23:08
Speaker 1: dedicated network of nerves, and she thinks that if your brain,
23:15
Speaker 1: you know, she likens it to like a mosquito lands
23:17
Speaker 1: on your skin and you can't you can feel it,
23:20
Speaker 1: you don't realize you're feeling it. But your your brain
23:22
Speaker 1: picks up on it, so you go to itch it
23:24
Speaker 1: or slap at it. And she thinks that that's why
23:27
Speaker 1: we evolve to itch um, is to prevent insects from
23:31
Speaker 1: landing on us, and that that's all this is. Your
23:34
Speaker 1: brain doesn't differentiate. If you think there's a bug, then
23:37
Speaker 1: your brain thinks there's a bug, whether it is or not. Right.
23:39
Speaker 1: So her idea is that it's an itch disorder where
23:42
Speaker 1: there's not a bug, but your brain is getting those
23:44
Speaker 1: signals and it's driving you crazy. Um and that this
23:49
Speaker 1: isn't being investigated and as a result, there's tens of thousands,
23:52
Speaker 1: if not more, people out there suffering, being treated like
23:56
Speaker 1: they're crazy and being offered absolutely no relief whatsoever from medicine.
24:02
Speaker 1: And then the doctor was the one that really blew
24:04
Speaker 1: me away. He got the end of the article. The
24:06
Speaker 1: doctor from the UK, the general practitioner. Yeah, his name
24:09
Speaker 1: is doctor nick Mann. And uh, he didn't even know
24:13
Speaker 1: he was an author when he got in touch with
24:14
Speaker 1: doctor Man. Yeah, he just thought he was just a
24:19
Speaker 1: regular morgel and sufferer. And he described his experience that
24:24
Speaker 1: his legs started itching after a walk. He was convinced
24:27
Speaker 1: something was on him. Um, it got really out of hand,
24:30
Speaker 1: and he eventually stripped down naked in his kitchen and
24:32
Speaker 1: tried to dig one out, and he said, I stood
24:35
Speaker 1: there for three or four hours waiting for one to bite.
24:37
Speaker 1: As soon as it did, I went for it with
24:39
Speaker 1: a hypodermic needle. His wife came in saw him all bloody,
24:42
Speaker 1: bleeding from the scrotum in other places, his nipple, and
24:46
Speaker 1: was horrified, obviously, and got three of these things into
24:50
Speaker 1: a glass jar and said, look at these, look at these,
24:53
Speaker 1: And she couldn't see anything. She thought he'd just gone
24:56
Speaker 1: completely off his rocker. Yeah, but he did actually send
25:01
Speaker 1: these in eventually to the UH to a hospital they
25:04
Speaker 1: couldn't identify it, and then to the Natural History Museum,
25:08
Speaker 1: and within one day they identified it as a tropical
25:11
Speaker 1: rat MTE. And so I thought, hey, well that's the answer.
25:16
Speaker 1: Then these are tropical rat mtes. But I think his
25:19
Speaker 1: his was the only case, because I tried to look
25:20
Speaker 1: up more evidence of that than it didn't really find
25:22
Speaker 1: anything besides him. So is that unrelated? Do you think?
25:26
Speaker 1: Is he just had a mite? I don't know. There
25:29
Speaker 1: are no answers to this. That's why I'm frustrated, And
25:31
Speaker 1: the big problem is that there's nobody really investigating it.
25:34
Speaker 1: There's like a handful of rag tag people who are
25:36
Speaker 1: investigating it, and the problem is that they're running into
25:41
Speaker 1: the structure of medicine and science, the scientific establishment, the
25:49
Speaker 1: establishments of both of these things, and where they cross
25:52
Speaker 1: and form this ven diagram. This is what these people
25:55
Speaker 1: are running up against. So it's like, if you're going
25:57
Speaker 1: to produce a legitimate academic paper on this thing, and
26:03
Speaker 1: you managed to get it published, and you managed to
26:05
Speaker 1: get another one published, and then another one, and you're
26:07
Speaker 1: a real researcher, but you're the only person producing academic
26:12
Speaker 1: papers on Morgellons, well you just look like a crackpot
26:15
Speaker 1: who has access to a couple of academic journals and
26:18
Speaker 1: can get something published because you're the only one who's
26:21
Speaker 1: who's writing about that, and anybody else who is who's
26:24
Speaker 1: ever even paid any attention to it, has just dismissed
26:27
Speaker 1: it as delusions of parasitosis. Right. Plus, you're not gonna
26:30
Speaker 1: get any funding. You're not. Well, you can, there's a
26:33
Speaker 1: few research um organizations that do fund that kind of stuff,
26:37
Speaker 1: but even still, it's in the eyes of the normal establishment.
26:40
Speaker 1: You're you're not going to be treated very seriously, so
26:44
Speaker 1: you're you're running into that. And then you know, one
26:47
Speaker 1: science is made up. It's mind. Apparently nobody's gonna look
26:51
Speaker 1: into it, and so there's no treatment for it whatsoever,
26:54
Speaker 1: because it's been determined these people are delusional and that's that.
26:59
Speaker 1: So why would we spend any more time looking into it? Well,
27:02
Speaker 1: why more even had a problem. I remember at one
27:05
Speaker 1: point getting labs to look at these fibers. Once they
27:09
Speaker 1: found out for this disease, they were like, oh no, no, no,
27:13
Speaker 1: we're not going to touch that, right, So I guess
27:15
Speaker 1: that would even if that's always the reputation of a lab,
27:17
Speaker 1: even like no one wants to touch this thing, right,
27:20
Speaker 1: And then a lot of Morgalon suffers aren't helping their
27:23
Speaker 1: case by just kind of supposing what could be the
27:27
Speaker 1: problem mites and bugs, since it feels like bugs are
27:30
Speaker 1: an obvious answer, and that itch researcher says, that's just
27:34
Speaker 1: totally sensible. If you have an itch disorder and your
27:36
Speaker 1: nerves are going, hey, whire, and it feels like bugs,
27:38
Speaker 1: why wouldn't you think it was small, tiny, invisible bugs.
27:41
Speaker 1: It makes sense. But then there's been other ideas proposed
27:44
Speaker 1: to like it's nanotechnology or genetically modified organisms that have
27:49
Speaker 1: run them buck and it's part of a government cover up. Yes,
27:53
Speaker 1: then these things are um like, these suggestions are not
27:56
Speaker 1: helping the case in the public eye or in the
27:59
Speaker 1: eye of of the academic or scientific establishment that these
28:02
Speaker 1: people are um mentally healthy. Yeah, it's been linked to
28:07
Speaker 1: kim trails. Okay, so and you're not going to get
28:10
Speaker 1: very far. But the thing is is if these people
28:13
Speaker 1: really do have something, whether it's an inch disorder, whether
28:16
Speaker 1: it's a bug that's not whatever it is, or if
28:23
Speaker 1: it's delusions of parasitosis. Either way they're still suffering. Yeah
28:28
Speaker 1: they still need help, yes, so, but no one's giving
28:33
Speaker 1: it to them. Well, they are in the form of
28:35
Speaker 1: psychiatric treatment, but that's not good enough for a lot
28:39
Speaker 1: of these people because they say I don't need psychiatric
28:42
Speaker 1: treatment because I have a physical issue. Ah. The complaint
28:47
Speaker 1: is is they think I'm crazy and I'm not crazy.
28:51
Speaker 1: It's sad. It is sad. I want to follow up
28:54
Speaker 1: on this, I bet you. I mean, I'm sure they're
28:57
Speaker 1: things what bothers me about sciences. They may not think
28:59
Speaker 1: that they could discover some new It's just so easily dismissed.
29:03
Speaker 1: It just kind of bugs me, it bugs you. But
29:07
Speaker 1: I mean there are some you in sciences defense or
29:10
Speaker 1: medicine's defense, there are there's some evidence that it is
29:13
Speaker 1: fictitious or delusion, like supposedly. Uh. And in this will
29:18
Speaker 1: store article, there's one guy who's like his welts were
29:22
Speaker 1: healing up, and the author asked him, you know what,
29:26
Speaker 1: what did you do that's different that's making your wealthy.
29:28
Speaker 1: Lo's like, I just stopped itching. I just stopped scratching,
29:31
Speaker 1: and that makes every doctor in the role go, see there, exactly,
29:35
Speaker 1: stop scratching, You're gonna stop getting the welts because the
29:37
Speaker 1: welts are produced by itching. But then there's the other side.
29:40
Speaker 1: It's like, well what about the welts there are on
29:42
Speaker 1: parts of the body where it's like I can't reach.
29:46
Speaker 1: How do you explain that? So I guess, yeah, we
29:50
Speaker 1: need to revisit it, Like you say, yeah, I would
29:52
Speaker 1: love to if we have a listener out there the
29:53
Speaker 1: suffering from this, I would love to hear a firsthand
29:55
Speaker 1: account of your experience. Yes, we won't judge you know
29:59
Speaker 1: of it is not if you want to learn more
30:03
Speaker 1: about Morgelon's disease. You can read that really awesome article
30:08
Speaker 1: that it's Nobody can scratch. It's very compelling by Will Store.
30:12
Speaker 1: I think it's on medium dot com. You can also
30:15
Speaker 1: type in Morgelon's m O r G E L l
30:18
Speaker 1: O n S in the search bar how stuffworks dot
30:20
Speaker 1: com and will bring up another article as well. Since
30:23
Speaker 1: I said search bar, it's time forward listener mail. I'm
30:27
Speaker 1: gonna call this m p A A follow up. Hey guys,
30:30
Speaker 1: I'm a newcomer and have been loving the episodes. I'm
30:33
Speaker 1: also a PhD student in cinema and media studies. I
30:35
Speaker 1: was excited to see you do the m p A episode.
30:38
Speaker 1: You did a great job covering a lot of its
30:40
Speaker 1: current controversies and explaining the common misconceptions about c A
30:45
Speaker 1: r A. I just wanted to add a little bit
30:47
Speaker 1: explanation to the X rating, which is such a strange
30:51
Speaker 1: portion of the m p a's history. When the ratings
30:54
Speaker 1: code was instituted, Jack Balini used an X rating for films,
30:59
Speaker 1: but he never copy righted the X rating because he
31:01
Speaker 1: did not want to encourage the rating or come off
31:04
Speaker 1: as monopolistic. Midnight Cowboy, acclaimed for winning Best Picture as
31:09
Speaker 1: an X rated film, actually self rated itself X and
31:13
Speaker 1: began a marketing campaign to exemplify its status as unique
31:16
Speaker 1: and artistic, fair for adults rather than pornography. UH. Soon
31:20
Speaker 1: pornographic films also began self imposing the X rating, and
31:24
Speaker 1: newspapers refused to advertise for X rated films. Theatrical porn
31:28
Speaker 1: was booming. It's so weird to think about theatrical born
31:32
Speaker 1: like going in the theater and watching that with people.
31:34
Speaker 1: Very weird. UH. Films like Deep Throat placed in the
31:38
Speaker 1: top ten of the year. While Hollywood pushed for legislation
31:41
Speaker 1: against theatrical porn, they also distanced themselves from the rogue
31:45
Speaker 1: X rating that they once controlled. The m p a
31:48
Speaker 1: A quickly expanded the R rating and re rated films
31:52
Speaker 1: to avoid it. Wes Craven even illegally quote unquote, I'm
31:58
Speaker 1: sorry vote illegally end of quote, spliced in an R
32:03
Speaker 1: rating banner from a different film into his nineteen seventy
32:07
Speaker 1: three film The Last House on the Left because he
32:09
Speaker 1: cannot get the m p a A to grant him
32:11
Speaker 1: an R rating. It's a strange time and somewhat more
32:13
Speaker 1: fluid since pig theater chains and multiplexes were not as
32:16
Speaker 1: ubiquitous as they are today. Sadly, the n C seventeen
32:20
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like much of an answer to the X
32:22
Speaker 1: rating legacy, since its films only play two limited art
32:25
Speaker 1: house audiences for the most part, You are right that
32:29
Speaker 1: v O D poses hope though, Uh what's that video? Onto? Man?
32:34
Speaker 1: If anyone is interested in this and more in the
32:36
Speaker 1: n B A, this should check out John Lewis's Hollywood
32:39
Speaker 1: The Hardcore. It's a fascinating read. Thanks again, guys, all
32:43
Speaker 1: the best. That is Dan from u c l A.
32:46
Speaker 1: Go Bruins. Nice Thanks a lot. That's some good info. Yeah, totally,
32:51
Speaker 1: that's basically like a treatise on the history of the
32:54
Speaker 1: X rating. Agreed, good going. Who was that Dan from
32:58
Speaker 1: u c l AN. Thanks Dan and Go Bruins. Indeed. Uh.
33:02
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with us to
33:04
Speaker 1: give us more information about something we've talked about, we
33:07
Speaker 1: love that kind of stuff. You can tweet to us
33:09
Speaker 1: at s Y s K podcast. You can join us
33:11
Speaker 1: on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you should Know. You
33:15
Speaker 1: can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how
33:17
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com and check out our website. What's
33:21
Speaker 1: your problem? Go to www. Dot stuff You should know
33:27
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
33:35
Speaker 1: Does it, How stuff works dot com